WARREN, CHARLES (1767–1823), line-engraver, was born in London on 4 June 1767. Of his early career the only facts recorded are that he married at the age of eighteen, and was at one time engaged in engraving on metal for calico-printing, but during the last twenty years of his life he enjoyed a great reputation as an engraver of small book-illustrations. His plates after R. Smirke in the English editions of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ 1802, ‘Gil Blas,’ 1809, and ‘Don Quixote,’ 1818, were very successful; and his ‘Broken Jar,’ after Wilkie, one of the illustrations to Coxe's ‘Social Day,’ is a masterpiece of its kind. Other fine publications to which he contributed were Kearsley's edition of Shakespeare, Du Roveray's edition of Pope, Walker's ‘British Classics,’ Sharpe's ‘Classics,’ Suttaby's ‘Poets,’ and ‘Physiognomical Portraits.’ Warren was an active member of the Society of Arts and also of the Artists' Fund, of which he was president from 1812 to 1815. For some valuable improvements which he made in the preparation of steel plates for engraving he was awarded the large gold medal of the Society of Arts in 1823, but he did not live to receive it, dying suddenly at Wandsworth on 21 April of that year. He was buried at St. Sepulchre's, Newgate Street. A portrait of Warren, from a sketch by Mulready, is in Pye's ‘Patronage of British Art.’

Ambrose William Warren (1781?–1856), son of Charles Warren, born about 1781, practised line-engraving with ability, and examples of his work are found in the ‘Stafford Gallery,’ Cattermole's ‘Book of the Cartoons,’ the ‘Gem,’ 1830–1, and ‘Ancient Marbles in the British Museum.’ His most important single plates are ‘The Beggar's Petition,’ after Witherington, 1827, and ‘The New Coat,’ after Wilkie, 1832. He died in 1856.

[Gent. Mag. 1823, ii. 187; Pye's Patronage of British Art; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; list of members of the Artists' Annuity Fund.]